Hungarian Students Won Second Place In International Environmental Competition

Students enrolled in Bilingual.hu’s bilingual education program at Krúdy Gyula Primary School, located in the third district of Budapest, recently won second place in an international environmental competition.

The competition was managed by the nonprofit Polar Bears International out of Montana, United States. Out of sixteen competing teams representing six countries, the Bilingual.hu “Green Team” was the only international team to place. The competition focused on building awareness and action within local communities around the world; action that would help to preserve the frozen habitat of the polar bear by reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

The Green Team coordinated with their school to establish a 35-bin recycling system, provide educational presentations in both Hungarian and English to all classes at the school, and save over 1,000 bins of plastic and paper waste from the trash.

The competition ran from November 25, 2016 – March 15, 2017 with winners announced on April 21 in celebration of Earth Day. The school is also recognized as a“green school”.

Judges from the competition said; “The team did a fantastic job of setting goals and beginning to work towards them. They are extremely enthusiastic and driven students with a knack for creative problem solving. The sheer impact of this team’s project is what most impresses me; they went from an no recycling program to over 30 bins in a single school!”.

The team is comprised of 28 students mostly in the 8.a and 7.a classes, with some representation from 6.a and 5.a. The class was lead by their environmental science teacher, Joe Grassi, and competition advisor Ash Merscher, both English teachers from the United States. The team intends to use their winnings to expand their project next year and to continue to build community support of their recycling project.

Szőlőtő Bilingual Educational Non-Profit, Ltd., is a K-8 education company operating in 3 public primary/middle schools and 2 kindergartens in Budapest, Hungary.Our program features native speakers of English co-teaching with Hungarian counterparts in a tightly integrated pedagogical system that brings Hungarian children forward in their use and knowledge of English by several years compared to their counterparts in standard bilingual programs. Our goal is to bring our students to a near-native level of English.

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